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Re: [RC] Suicide race - Sherry Brunkhardt
Sherry Riding a horse is not a gentle hobby, to be picked up and laid down like a game of solitaire. It is a grand passion. It seizes a person whole and, once it has done so, he will have to accept that his life will be radically changed. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrea Day" <fetlocks@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Sunday, September 23, 2007 12:53 AM Subject: [RC] Suicide race
Or maybe I'm not so much in favor of Suicide Races as I am of dispassionate evaluation--something that seems to be tossed out the window here fairly often. Please look at the inflammatory wording on the article quoted. "The opening stretch is 210 feet in length" and once at the bottom "The exhausted and terrified horses are then forced to swim or run" The horses are exhausted after going only 210 feet?
Apparently, the writer isn't sure if it's 60-degree slope or a 90-degree vertical. I've seen endurance riders forcing their sweating, heaving, straining mounts to trot up sandy sixty-degree vertical hills in the Eagle, Idaho foothills. (whoops, forgive the hyperbole, the article got to me there) Trotting down these slopes is only for the brave at heart, but I've seen endurance riders do it, and I've seen cowboys chase cows down a rocky(!) Owyee rangeland slope easily sixty to sixty-five-degrees. Here's a couple slope pictures: http://www.hikingintherockies.com/TM/IMG_0544.jpg The caption to this one: "I took this shot to show the slope actually was 40-degrees since most people over-estimate a slope angle." I'd say the majority of Top Ten finishers have trotted or cantered a slope of 40-degrees with good footing. Assuming the author didn't over-estimate or, heaven forbid, exaggerate, here's some examples of sixty-degree slopes: http://humanities.cqu.edu.au/geography/GEOG11023/images/TiltStrataWMcDons2.jpg Caption: "Here the strata are folded with about a 65 degree tilt to the south." It's doable. Several Pacific Northwest endurance rides have hills this steep. http://www.martinelliwinery.com/images/jackass_1_colorized.jpg Here's a picture of a fella farming a sixty-degree slope--Jackass Hill is the steepest non-terraced hillside vineyard in Sonoma County. If a tractor can handle the slope, a horse can, the only question then becomes how fast is practical or safe. At that point, it depends on the horse and the rider.
That distance is "approximately" 50 yards less than the 100 yard dash I won in sixth grade, and approximately 14 feet shorter than the regulation 50 meter Olympic pool. My kids were allowed to take their horses out to creek where it was sandy for about a quarter mile and gallop them up and down the creek bed in the summer. The horses seemed to enjoy racing. If the kids had a parent along, they could go to the reservoir and swim the horses for the afternoon. Some horses swam naturally, some learned, some were awkward, and some swam better than others. I guess you could call it "forcing a horse to swim" when the 12 year-old riding bareback is kicking for all he's worth to get his pony in the water fast enough to catch his sister so he can knock her off her horse. "As the animals struggle out of the river, riders whip and kick the horses into a gallop up a steep grade to the finish line." Whoops, the writer forgot to mention spurs. Why didn't the writer just come out and say "the riders beat their horses into a gallop"? That's what's being insinuated. Kentucky Derby jockeys carry whips and kick their horses. Barrel racers spur their horses--some carry bats. Even dressage riders are known to carry whips and wear spurs. Cowboys over-and-under a horse jumping after a cow. I've seen endurance riders race to the finish kicking every stride. Most don't carry whips, but that doesn't mean I haven't seen them used to get a cranky horse out of camp on occasion. "Not as easy to see is the mental stress the race has on the horses-by nature high-strung, sensitive animals." That sentence could easily be written by someone from PETA discussing endurance. Their next sentence might conceivably point to ulcers in endurance horses as 'proof' of their mental stress. Food for thought there. "The horses and riders who successfully complete the first race will go on to race again..." The horses run successive heats over DAYS, unlike Standardbred racing. Depending on your agenda, it would be easy to write an article on how endurance riders "force" their horses to trot or run while covering long distances of 5 to 10 miles "without water." Meanwhile the horses are "pouring sweat" and at the finish are "exhausted" and will stand next to the trailers with their "head hanging." (post-ride horse nap) Despite all our best efforts, horses do get hurt and even die at endurance rides from metabolic issues, breaking a leg and having to be destroyed, or in hideous and unforeseen accidents. Sport entails effort and risk. 30+ years ago there was a Suicide Race near the Idaho-Oregon border consisting of similar terrain--down a steep embankment, across a river, and approximately a 1/4 mile run up the bank and across the flat. It was run as a one shot deal, not in heats. $300 prize money. For some reason, I thought my mustang mare could do this course, not to win of course, but it sounded like great fun to run down the hill, swim the river, and race to the finish. That year, not really knowing just what it entailed, rather than haul the horse over, I decided to go watch instead. It was an amazing lesson. I learned that there are two types of riders that enter these races. The first are amazingly tough and capable riders--mostly cowboys--who have well-conditioned working horses that are experienced in handling rough terrain, bred, born, and raised in this country, and together, rider and horse are a professional team. These horses will do anything for their riders, and these riders have an immense respect for their horses and know what they're capable of. Watching a skilled team like this compete will take your breath away. They're not racing for some prize money, although it's always a bonus, they're racing to challenge themselves and prove the caliber of their mount. The other kind of rider? They're just idiots. Haven't got a clue. Drugstore cowboys, big egos, money grubbers and wannabes. This yours-truly wannabe watched and applauded and booed and cheered and went home convinced that, as a race, this was waaaay out of MY league. Two years later, I did enter my horse, and it was great fun to *trot* down the hill, swim the river, and race to the finish--tied for dead last. I remember at least two horses fell, one man getting bucked off, one woman breaking her arm, but fortunately no equine or human killed. I also remember one year in the seventies at Prineville endurance ride, the attrition rate was about the same at the shotgun start. Suicide races and rodeo are two uniquely Western sports that arose out of the daily work that was done by cowboys. Men would pit their skills against the animals, the land, and each other, and because their work was rough and dangerous, their idea of fun was tough, and their competition was rough, and often dangerous. Both sets of participants were at risk--animals and men. It's entirely understandable that both sports would be under fire today. But enough of the romanticism. I remember gritting my teeth and hearing from the 'old-timers' about how endurance rides killed horses. Heidi is spot-on, much of the bad rap endurance had was a hang-over from the Suicide Races and the Pony-Express races that went from being local good-natured competition between a few cowboys on the 4th of July, to being cut-throat 'big money' races that it was worth the risk of killing a horse to win. It's taken a long time for endurance to become "respectable." Just like rodeo has had a bad reputation, endurance has had a bad rep. What makes these sports possible today is oversight, clear and stringent rules that protect the animals, and internal as well as external monitoring. Even though horses can die in endurance, we as horsemen and sportsmen have declared an acceptable level of effort and risk in our sport. Perhaps instead of a knee-jerk reaction and a call for the end of Suicide Races, we should be clamoring for regulations, oversight, and an allowance of an acceptable level of risk. Steeple chasing, endurance riding, bronc riding, puissance jumping, bushkazi and yes, suicide rides, are all dangerous sports that have evolved out of our past equestrian alliance as supreme tests of man and horse. As endurance riders, we hark back to the ideals of the US Cavalry, the Cadre Noir, the Mongolian Horde, the cowboy, the gaucho, the Cossack. Our ultimate sophisticated ballet with horses, the airs above the ground, evolved from methods of warfare. The sentimentalist in me doesn't want to see horses, or people, hurt; the romantic in me doesn't want to entirely let go of our glorious and dangerous past. _________________________________________________________________ Gear up for Halo® 3 with free downloads and an exclusive offer. http://gethalo3gear.com?ocid=SeptemberWLHalo3_MSNHMTxt_1 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. 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